Category Archives: Mental Illness

Great article on capitalism and mental health: The privatisation of stress is a perfect capture system, elegant in its brutal efficiency. Capital makes the worker ill, and then multinational pharmaceutical companies sell them drugs to make them better. The social and political causation of distress is neatly sidestepped at the same time as discontent is […]

Great article on depression and basic income: Why? If depression is primarily—as we have been led to believe by pharmaceutical company marketing campaigns—a problem with our brain chemistry, this makes no sense. The brains of the people of Dauphin did not suddenly evolve in those three years. But the World Health Organization, the leading medical […]

An exercise that happens all too often in mental health circles is exercise guilting. They tell people physical exercise can treat depression (without giving any details about how much) and then when it isn’t working (generally for people with more severe depression) they move the stakes and say things like “you’re doing it wrong” or […]

I have always understood psychology to be an enemy if not the enemy. From an article on how digital media is messing up kids: As a child and adolescent psychologist myself, the inevitable conclusion is both embarrassing and heartbreaking. The destructive forces of psychology deployed by the tech industry are making a greater impact on […]

There is a good case to be made for the stigma surrounding mental illness, at least for those in power. For one, it keeps money that could go to the rich from reaching social services. The second is harder to explain. We need to start seeing shame and stigma as a discipline because that’s the way […]

STIR article that says what I feel way better than I could: When I say that I am against forgiveness, I am not judging individuals who choose to forgive. If doing so helps you, then by all means, forgive. What I abhor is a culture that places demands on victims and survivors, insisting that we […]

There’s a really easy way to tell whether a mental health treatment is likely effective. If, when the treatment fails, the person gets blamed then the treatment’s effectiveness should be seriously called into question. For example religion often makes all these extravagant promises and then when they don’t come to fruition the person shoulders the […]

The whole evolutionary point of depression was to serve as a call for extra support from the group. Modern hyperindividualistic methods of treating depression often don’t work. It is easy to see why, everyone naturally does (and indeed is expected to) optimize for individual happiness and that involves staying far away from anyone that could […]

Mass shooting tragedies like the one in New Brunswick and Seattle Pacific University seem to be happening more and more often. I am in a unique situation to give feedback on this because the perpetrators often have spec sheets like me–male, angry, withdrawn, mentally ill/aspergers, etc.. Decline of the church as an active force in […]

Just like the economic haves and have-nots there are interpersonal haves and have-nots (though obviously the wealthier and closer one is to being of privilege the more likely they will be an interpersonal have). Unsurprisingly there are forces keeping interpersonal mobility in check as near as your nearest therapist’s office. The dog-whistle “innate worth” trope. […]